I’m a graduate of the University of Sydney, and today ballots were sent out to all graduates of the university to vote in the quadrennial election of five Graduate Fellows to sit on the Senate.
The University Senate is the governing body, and also includes four representatives of academic staff, one representative of non-academic staff and one representative each for undergraduate and postgraduate students. There are also other fellows appointed by the minister and in other ways. Despite a large proportion of its membership being elected, the body tends to not operate along partisan or factional lines.
In some ways it’s unusual to write a blog post about what is a rather unusual election only of interest to a small community, but the politics of the candidates’ factional alliances and the peculiar and concerning electoral system has been fascinating me.
Continue reading below the fold. If you’re not interested, I’ll return to your regular schedule tomorrow with a post on the New Zealand council elections.
There is something fascinating about university elections, particularly when it comes to graduates. People who have moved on from a university, but have experienced it and finished a degree, are asked to return and give direction for the university’s governance.
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have particularly interesting elections for their Chancellors, usually once every decade or two, when all those with a Masters of Arts turn up in person, in academic dress, to cast a ballot. In the past former Prime Ministers and other politicians have run for the office, and thousands have voted.
Beyond that, the system used to elect the Senate is utterly bizarre.
The University of Sydney By-law 1999 (PDF) governs Senate elections, and supposedly explains how votes are counted.
Division 7 explains a system that seems to suggest that the election works in a particular way: candidates are eliminated, and preferences are passed on, until five candidates are left standing. Candidates don’t reach a ‘quota’ when they stop receiving preferences, and keep picking up votes even if they don’t need them, and surpluses aren’t distributed.
That would have been interesting enough, and I had ideas about writing down some ideas about how to tactically cast your vote in a system where candidates with a high primary vote don’t help other candidates with preferences, by voting for low-polling candidates first.
But it’s even weirder than that.
Nine pages earlier, in the definitions, you find this gem:
primary votes means:
(a) in the case of elections to fill one position only under Division 6—votes on ballot papers or electronic votes marked “1”, and
(b) in the case of elections to fill more than one position under Division 7—votes on a ballot paper or an electronic vote marked “1”, “2” and so on up to the number of positions to be filled.
If I read this correctly, not only is your number ‘1’ counted as a ‘primary vote’, but so is your number ‘2’, your number ‘3’, ‘4’ and ‘5’. Does this mean all five of these preferences are treated as separate equal votes for five different candidates? I think so, but I could be wrong.
I emailed the relevant people at the University in charge of the election, asking for clarification, but haven’t been able to get any information about how this ridiculous system works. I also asked, as someone voting in the election, to see a copy of the tally sheet from the 2009 election to illuminate how the votes are counted, and was told that it’s not how things are done. I’ll keep pursuing that.
However, I have managed to get a copy of the last election for academic staff representatives, which uses the same electoral system (electing four representatives rather than five). You can view it here.
Voters effectively each have five votes. From looking at the results of the last academic staff election, it seems that only your ‘1’ vote flows on if one of your candidates is knocked out, while other votes get counted only if they are in the first five preferences. I can’t be 100% sure about that without seeing another result with more candidates running.
The system has a lot in common with the ‘preferential block voting’ system used to elect the Australian Senate from 1922 to 1949, which on occasions produced situations where one side of politics was reduced to three out of 36 seats in the Senate.
This leads us into discussing the candidates running for the Senate, and in particular two ‘tickets’ of five candidates that have been formed. The system is designed in a way that can allow a disciplined ‘ticket’ to win all five seats with a bare majority of the vote.
Twenty-two candidates have nominated, including four who are sitting Senate Fellows: Barry Catchlove, Peter FitzSimons, Jane Spring and David Turner.
In 2009, FitzSimons and Spring ran on a ticket of five candidates, although it’s been hard to find out any more information about that election.
This time around FitzSimons and Spring are running on the Unify ticket along with former Labor state MP for Balmain Verity Firth, former Liberal federal MP for Wentworth Peter King and Bruce McWilliam.
The National Tertiary Education Union, who have been involved in a fierce fight over jobs and conditions at the University over the course of the last year, have also endorsed a ticket of five candidates. Confusingly, they have also endorsed Verity Firth. In addition, they’ve endorsed Catriona Menzies-Pike, Barbara Reed, Toby Fattore, and ABC Radio National host Andrew West.
Apart from these candidates, the other prominent figure is Sydney Morning Herald journalist Kate McClymont.
Some candidates, particularly those supported by the NTEU, are actively campaigning against the current management agenda and the casualisation of the university workforce. Others are actively campaign to protect the independence of Sydney University’s colleges which have been under assault after numerous scandals in recent years.
So what’s the smart way to vote? Well, it’s not the way you normally would expect to.
If a ticket is disciplined and gets their voters to vote for the same five and wins a majority of the vote, they win all five seats. That is unlikely to happen, as you’d expect many graduates to vote for those candidates they know: FitzSimons, Firth, King, West, McClymont amongst others.
First of all, the key is your first five preferences. All five of these will be counted as ‘1’ votes, effectively. You may not want to number many more boxes after that.
If the candidate who you gave your ‘1’ to is knocked out, your preference will flow on to another candidate. It seems that, while ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘4’ and ‘5’ votes are counted as primary votes, they do not flow on as preferences. So if you wish to number more than five boxes, give your ‘1’ vote to a candidate who is less likely to get a high vote and thus could be knocked out.
If your ‘1’ vote gets knocked out, that vote will likely flow on to the sixth preference, if you have one, and they could be competing for a seat with one of your other preferred candidates.
So only number additional boxes if you are happy to see those candidates elected, otherwise stop at five. Definitely don’t number all the boxes, even if you enjoy putting a particular candidate last.
Of course, all this advice is based on my understanding of the electoral system, which could be wrong, thanks to the limited and unhelpful information from the University.
Good luck, and please vote!
Interesting post.
I don’t understand an aspect of the example linked (the 2013 election of academic staff).
A) It seems (looking at the totals) that 709 valid votes were cast and that they all numbered at least 1 to 4 on the ballot paper. The toatal of every 1 vote is 709, as it is with every 2,3 and 4 vote.
B) However when 6th and 5th placed candidates were excluded, there were a number of “exhausted” votes, implying that the elector had only put a “1” on the ballot paper and that this was counted as a valid vote.
How can both A and B be true?
It seems that only ‘1’ votes get passed on when a candidate gets knocked out. Since you were only required to number four boxes, some people would have only numbered the four boxes that got their first four votes, and had no others to get the preference when their ‘1’ candidate was knocked out.
Ben, I just voted in the election.
I reckon your description of the electoral system is probably correct. While concerted bloc voting could elect a team of five, there won’t be bloc voting en masse in this election.
Something that struck me about the candidates in this election were the number of well-known figures running – while some had the experience to contribute, it wasn’t clear that some others did. The University of Queensland Senate election, also being held at the moment (also just voted in it), didn’t have nearly as well-known figures running for its 3 graduate representatives.
I’ve always looked through candidate statements for University Senate elections.
Ben, it does sounds very much like the system the ALP uses internally to fill multi-member positions (except where PR is prescribed – e.g. for elections held at state conference). I’ve participated and scrutineered in a couple of such elections – it seems designed to allow a disciplined majority to win all the positions on offer.
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